Latin American Economy & Business - March 2019

Anatomy of a catastrophic blackout

Venezuela has just suffered one Latin America’s longest power cuts. Electricity supply across most of the country went down on 7 March. It remained down or intermittent for the following seven days. It was not until 14 March that the government was able to claim that some type of normal service had been restored. Here we look at what may have gone wrong and try to assess the economic costs and implications.